Review
Genre and Mood
GusGus’s “Over” is house music that sings: an electronic track with the shape of a synth-pop song, groovy in its rhythm and sultry in its voices. It is the moment where the Icelandic group’s club side and its pop side meet.
Song Summary
“Over” is the fourth track of Arabian Horse, the album GusGus released on Kompakt on 23 May 2011, and it came out again on 13 June 2011 as the single named here, with five remixes alongside the original. Two voices lead it, Daníel Ágúst Haraldsson and Urður Hákonardóttir, and the four credited members wrote and produced it together. Textura heard the album hit its greatest stride on this song, the place where all of GusGus’s strengths coalesce.
Musical Breakdown
No source maps “Over” bar by bar over its six minutes, so the parts below follow what the two reviews we found heard in it.
The Groove
Textura heard an irresistibly funky house groove; The Quietus heard rippling beats and ice-cool production.
The Voices
The song is a duet. Textura praised the stunning vocal interplay between Hákonardóttir and Ágúst, and The Quietus heard the female vocals harmonising perfectly in the background.
The Synths
Around the voices sit what Textura called inflamed synth atmospheres, on an album where it heard the burble and swell of analog gear throughout.
Outro
How the track ends is left undescribed. Listen for whether the voices or the groove have the last word.
Concepts in Focus
The house groove is the floor a song like this stands on: in house music generally, a four-on-the-floor kick, off-beat hi-hats and claps that let a song with melodies and a chorus still work in a club. No source describes the drum pattern of “Over” itself, but Textura’s word “funky” points to parts that push against each other rather than just marking time.
vocal harmony is what turns two singers into a duet. In “Over”, the reviews describe both interplay, the voices trading lines, and harmony, the female voice singing other notes behind the lead to widen the chorus.
The analog synthesizer gives the album its texture. Its slightly unstable circuits produce the swell and burble Textura heard, a warmth set against The Quietus’s ice-cool production.
Artistic Context
GusGus formed in Reykjavík in 1995 as a film and acting collective and became known above all for electronic music, released first on 4AD and later on Kompakt in Cologne. Arabian Horse kept the line-up of 24/7, Biggi Veira, President Bongo and Daníel Ágúst, and brought back Urður “Earth” Hákonardóttir, whose return The Quietus credited with new energy.
Impact and Reception
Arabian Horse topped the Icelandic album chart and went gold there, and both reviews we found picked out this song: Textura heard something that could pass for a modern-day Human League, The Quietus a classic piece of Europop. Compare it with Kölsch – Bloodline (feat. Tomas Høffding), another voice on Kompakt, and press play.
